THE ALPS Not Rated
John Harlin III lost his father on the north face of
the Eiger in 1966. Forty years later, we follow him
and two climbing buddies up the same path his
father took, along an extremely treacherous
ascent made all the more breathtaking through
the IMAX aperture. The Alps—with noble narration
by Michael Gambon and thrilling music by
Queen—tells the story of one man’s irrepressible
determination to exorcise demons that have
haunted him throughout his life. In typical IMAX
fashion, the film beautifully captures the magnificent
mountain countryside of Switzerland. (John
Jahn)
Through March 13 at the Milwaukee Public
Museum.
AMERICAN GANGSTER R
Denzel Washington is oh-so-good at being bad,
and Russell Crowe’s intensity proves a great
match. These two dynamic actors burst into a
world of drugs, violence, fragile friendships and
family bonds. Washington and Crowe play a brutal
game of cat and mouse, legally and covertly,
in order to survive. Director Ridley Scott sends
viewers down a torrid highway into an alternative
Harlem lifestyle, beginning with gasoline, a cigar,
a handgun and a bang. (Yolanda White)
BEE MOVIE PG
It’s difficult to imagine that this stellar cast could
fail, considering the sweet material. Jerry Seinfeld
penned the script, starring himself as Barry the
Bee. While exploring Manhattan, Barry discovers
that people have been helping themselves to bee
honey. Determined to set things right, Barry sues
humanity in court (here comes ’da judge, Oprah).
Imaginative animation views our world from a
bee’s perspective. Renée Zellweger plays a sympathetic
florist Barry befriends. With real-life bees
in jeopardy of dying out, Bee Movie’s release is
timely. (Lisa Miller)
BELLA PG-13
Humor and sadness, death and life, family and
individuals, business and pleasure—the awardwinning
indie film Bella harmoniously balances
these and other poles of being. Filmed with the
eye of an artful photographer, juxtaposing sweeping
panoramas of New York City with detailed
close-ups and making good use of the emotional
properties of color and camera angle, Bella tells
the story of Jose, a melancholy chef and former
soccer star from a squabbling but warmhearted
Hispanic family, and Nina, the pregnant product of
dysfunctional America. It’s a film of small and
meaningful gestures, composed of many New
York moments. (David Luhrssen)
BEOWULF PG-13
The epic poem hits the big screen as a motioncapture
animation by the director responsible for
The Polar Express. Watching the trailer reveals
that technology has advanced, though it still
brings a video game vibe to the film. Most characters
appear as more youthful versions of themselves,
seamlessly blended with an array of
undersea and half-human monsters, and a large
wrecking-ball of a dragon. Seeking fame and fortune,
Viking brute Beowulf arrives to slay Grendel,
the man-monster harrying a seaside castle. In
short order Beowulf is seduced by Grendel’s
mother, a naked Angelina Jolie painted gold.
Thanks to revisionist body mapping, both Ray
Winstone as Beowulf and Anthony Hopkins as
King Hrothgar drop 50 to 70 pounds and 20 to 30
years in age. So how long before the rest of us
can take advantage of this technology? (L.M.)

Film Clips

THE DARJEELING LIMITED R
The Darjeeling Limited is a return to form for
writer-director Wes Anderson, recapturing the
whimsical melancholy—leavened with mordant
humor—of The Royal Tenenbaums. Like the
Tenenbaums, Darjeeling is suffused with an
eccentric nostalgia for an epoch more exciting
than our own and for dreams that never materialized.
A stop-and-start “spiritual journey” across
India by train forces the estranged Whitman brothers
(Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, Adrien
Brody) to measure the awkward spaces between
questions and answers and their own short stride
after having walked in place through their entire
lives without a destination in mind. (D.L.)
DINOSAURS ALIVE! Not Rated
Recalling the absolute thrill of seeing realisticlooking
dinosaurs on the big screen for the first
time in 1993’s Jurassic Park, Dinosaurs Alive!
produces goose bumps with its excellent computer-generated
images and the sheer size of the
IMAX screen. More than just 50-odd minutes of
looking at dinosaurs, the film tells the story of
paleontology itself. By packing lots of information
about the lives and deaths of these fascinating
creatures, moviegoers will find a new respect for
those who discover fossilized bones and tell us
so much about them. Narrated by Michael
Douglas, Dinosaurs Alive! reveals the latest thinking
in the field of paleontology. Believe it or not,
descendants of dinosaurs are alive and well, living
with us to this very day. (J.J.)
Through Jan. 17 at the Milwaukee Public
Museum.
ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE
PG-13
To judge by lovely, 38-year-old Cate Blanchett,
you’d never guess Queen Elizabeth was actually
52 when the story joins her in 1585. Blanchett
reprises the same role under the same director
that rocketed her to fame. The queen is depicted
vicariously living through the successes of her
favorite explorer and knight, Sir Walter Raleigh
(Clive Owen), 20 years her junior, yet a man she
hankers for. Despite messy private affairs,
Elizabeth holds Spain at bay, lays the groundwork
for England’s expansion and quashes a Catholic
assassination plot intended to put cousin Mary
Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton) on the
throne. Geoffrey Rush returns as Sir Francis
Walsingham, the queen’s trusted adviser.
However, even a great cast needs the succinct
dialogue and perceptive direction missing from
this sequel to the Oscar-nominated first chapter.
(L.M.)
FRED CLAUS PG
What if your family’s most annoying dynamics
went on for eternity? Vince Vaughn appears as
Santa’s brother, immortalized, along with his
entire clan, thanks to his brother’s (Paul Giamatti)
status as Saint Nick. An idea rife with comic
potential, Fred Claus settles for sending Fred
(Vince Vaughn) to the North Pole, where he
endures his mother’s sharp criticism before saving
the family business: Christmas. Kevin Spacey
is a slick efficiency expert intent on closing down
Santa’s operation in this glossy enterprise of a
film that gives little thought to the holiday movie
spirit. (L.M.)
GONE BABY GONE R
A parent’s worse nightmare: a stolen baby.

Without a ransom note, a child is not legally
declared kidnapped, just “missing.” When 6-year- old Amanda disappears, a concerned uncle and
aunt even hire neighbors Patrick and Angie, both
fairly new to the profession of investigation, to
assist the Boston police. There is no love lost
between the two factions as they search and
grapple with druggies, a missing bag of money
and a near-exchange that goes sour. Gone Baby
Gone is a chilling, tense film from frame-one to its
astonishing denouement. (Robert Richard Jorge)
I’M NOT THERE R
It’s an audacious concept: examining Bob Dylan’s
enigmatic personae through six actors, one of
them a woman (Cate Blanchett) and another a
young black boy (Marcus Carl Franklin). Directorwriter
Todd Haynes complicates matters further
by creating separate names and identities to represent
various incarnations of Dylan, cutting
between time periods, points of view, styles and
moods. I’m Not There frustrates as well as illuminates
and is, at turns, brilliant, sophomoric, silly
and wrong. The sound track is good, featuring performances
of Dylan songs by Eddie Vedder and
the Million Dollar Bashers, a supergroup including
Tom Verlaine and Lee Ranaldo. (D.L.)
INTO THE WILD R
Newly graduated from college, Christopher
McCandless (Emile Hirsh) disappears off the grid.
Unaware that Chris has intentionally embarked on
a great adventure, his parents (Marcia Gay
Harden, William Hurt) understandably freak out.
Making his way through California and the Pacific
Northwest, Chris is on track to reach Alaska,
where he plans to live off the land in the isolated
wilderness. From the book by Jon Krakauer, this
Sean Penn-directed film incorporates witness
reports and Chris’ journals to trace the experiences
of this real-life 22-year-old. Incredible cinematography
combines with warmth and humor to
tell a story of reckless idealism and ultimate
tragedy. (L.M.)
JIMMY CARTER:
MAN FROM PLAINS PG
For many Americans, Jimmy Carter has become
the best ex-president the country ever had. He
has increasingly courted controversy, especially
with the provocative title of his latest book,
Palestine: Peace or Apartheid. The documentary
by Oscar-winner Jonathan Demme (Silence of the
Lambs) follows Carter on his recent book signing/lecture
tour, revealing a man of deep conviction
who wants a just peace for all sides in the
Middle East. Sadly, his use of the word
“apartheid” has become the issue, not the problems
Carter tried to address. (D.L.)
LARS AND THE REAL GIRL PG-13
Ryan Gosling stars in this bittersweet comedy
about a lonesome young man in a frigid Northern
town. Functioning at his dead-end job but increasingly
oblivious to social ties and even reality, he
purchases a sex doll online and believes it to be
real. When he announces his intention to marry
her to his startled family, the plot springs into
motion. With only a few missteps, Lars and the
Real Girl is everything an American indie film
should be: a close examination of the sort of people
and situations that otherwise get little play in
Hollywood. (D.L.)
MARTIAN CHILD PG
John Cusack plays a science-fiction writer who
adopts a young boy. And like many children who
construct fantasy worlds to lend color to their
daily lives, this child pretends he’s a Martian to
escape the abuse and neglect he’s suffered a the hands of previous guardians. Cusack, his putupon
sister (played by real-life sister Joan Cusack)
and a team of bland-looking psychologists try to
iron out the boy’s incongruities. And though the
outcome is overly sentimental, it does offer some
insight into the way social expectations exacerbate
the already-difficult task of raising happy,
well-rounded children. (Aisha Motlani)
MR MAGORIUM’S WONDER
EMPORIUM G
Dustin Hoffman channels his twinkly Tootsie character,
donning madcap eyebrows and hair to play
eccentric Mr. Magorium. The 243-year-old owner
of a magical toy store, Magorium hires an
accountant (Jason Bateman) to help him transfer
ownership of the store to its manager, young
Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman). Soon after taking
ownership, Molly confronts a dark element
that is trying to kill the emporium’s magical toys.
Fox-Walden studio, still recovering from the lackluster
Dark is Rising, has elected not to screen
this one in advance. The film’s trailer works overtime
to wow the audience, but underneath all the
frenzy, the story appears to be humdrum. (L.M.)
MY KID COULD PAINT THAT PG-13
Marla Olmstead: wunderkind or baby fraud? This
6-year-old has amassed a remarkable college
treasury for herself in excess of $300,000, all
from her Abstract art sales. Meanwhile, “60
Minutes” debunks Marla’s achievement by charging
her artist-father with fraudulently passing off
his own paintings as his baby daughter’s.
Seeking truth, documentary filmmaker Amir Bar-
Lev presents both sides as equally as possible,
thus allowing spectators to reach their own conclusions—in
addition to recognizing the obvious
madness of Modern art patrons. (R.R.J.)
P2 R
Here comes the season’s first horror-thriller in
what could be cause for a genre-fan thanksgiving.
Angela (Rachel Nichols), a brainy blond bombshell
loaded with guts and ambition, is the last worker
to leave her high-rise office on Christmas Eve.
Once she enters the parking garage, level P2,
there’s no turning back and, seemingly, no way
out. Angela has been targeted by a sadistic security
guard (Wes Bentley) determined to have her
all to himself—with help from his attack-trained
Rottweiler. (L.M.)
THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE R
Following the sudden death of her husband (David
Duchovny), bereft widow Audrey (Halle Berry)
seeks to honor her husband’s memory by inviting
his troubled friend, Jerry (Benicio Del Toro), to live
with her and her two children. Though struggling
to beat his heroin addiction, Jerry proves invaluable
help to Audrey and her children, still reeling
from their loss. A three-hanky weeper avoiding
sentimentality, the film should benefit from the
Oscar-buzz for Del Toro’s poignant portrayal.
(L.M.)
WRISTCUTTERS: A LOVE STORY R
After receiving its local debut at the 2006
Milwaukee International Film Festival,
Wristcutters finally gets a belated commercial
release. A strangely uplifting and darkly comic
road tale set in the afterlife, Wristcutters follows
a young man into a purgatory—a gray zone of
monotony—reserved for suicides, where he
meets his ex-wife. Reunited under such unexpected
circumstances, they bond as they never could
while alive. (Morton Shlabotnik)